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Member

I certainly can't disagree that there are a number of elements where I feel disappointed but I have honestly still really enjoyed my time with the game. It certainly scratches itches that Witcher didn't and vice versa.

On the other hand I feel I have been able to enjoy despite its problems due to playing on PC and being able to mod out of the gate. There obviously hasn't been major mods and wont be until the systems drop to do that but the minor tweaks have really helped in fixing some of the short comings. I truly feel for anyone playing on console this time round when I have been in that position in the past.

I do however feel that criticisms regarding the junk, crafting, etc are still a bit over zealous. Yes most of the junk is now useful (which is now somehow a bad thing after it basically being useless before), yes it has weight that can lead to over-encumbrance. But really, tag what you need, buy shipments to make it easier, don't unnecessarily carry a dozen weapons (one or two you will actually use regularly), don't be a kleptomaniac. The improvements to how you can customise and craft weapons and armour is excellent compared to previous Fallouts and Elder Scrolls, the base building is a nice bonus.

But certainly fair complaints all round for Fallout 4, I know I'm enjoying it because it is my sort of game (bar the reduction in actual RPing, that was quite a let down and I'm holding my breath for DLCs and Mods to help rectify this)

Neo Member

I played 10 hours before putting it down, probably for good. I can empathise with those who enjoy the game for its merits but this is the most let down I've been with a game in years.

To add to most of the already great points being made, and without resorting to a comparison with NV (which I really want to do), the game just isn't funny. There's very little in the way of interesting humour so far, and I don't see it getting much better. The sense of scale that they're trying to establish is ridiculous - how is that stadium the largest settlement in the commonwealth with all of 30 people in it? How can there be that level of social stratification with so few people? The mechanics of shooting are better, the environmental storytelling isn't bad, but so much of FO4 feels incredibly poorly thought out.

I feel like Bethesda's formula works much better in the Elder Scrolls games, maybe because they have a sense of ownership over that franchise and can generally do what they like within it. Fallout 3 and 4 add very little to the Fallout canon, but that's also due to the fact that most of the new additions or changes come off as so half-assed, especially in FO4.

Worth a short ban (1 hour to a day), sure. It might sound harsh, but the posts do come across as "don't give a fuck about this thread, don't give a fuck what you think OP" which raises the question that... Why are these people in the thread, again?

I worked as a moderator on a fairly small forum (around 100-200 active users, maybe?) for a couple of years and I never got any shit for my decisions. Can't say I envy Neogaf moderators.

Not much, but it doesn't try to completely dismiss the entire thread and OP's opinion, like the posts that disagree do. That's the point. If you're gonna start banning people for not adding to the conversation, you'd end up banning everyone all the time.

... and in response to your post, 'MUNTU' , how is your comment any better?

'Incredibly disappointing game. Maybe mods will save it for me in a year or two.' How did you explain any of your issues with the game in your post? Where in your post did you 'explain where you are coming from?? Should you be banned as well? What did your short agreement post add to this discussion?

Not at all man. I didn't mean anything by the name '' thing. I am on your side, you should be able to post what you did without fear of a ban! I wasn't attacking you.

Saying you liked a game is a perfectly valid input into a discussion. You don't need to write an essay about why you exactly liked it. Maybe the guy is at work and had 60 secs to post his message. Why should he need to explain in detail? His post contributes to the counter-argument that ppl did enjoy the game, for anyone else reading. Having never played Fallout 4, this is valuable to me in my judgement of the popular opinion on this game and whether it should get my interest.

Have you seen the shit posted in other threads that is ignored? Actual trolling.

Member

For the people who say that the combat is improved, do you honestly not mind the incredibly cheap and basic ai? Every time I try to play this game I get constantly sniped by grenade, missile and nuke spamming enemies, which would be okay if the game had better check pointing or auto saves, but as it stands on consoles I have to constantly quick save or else I'm stuck repeating 5 minutes of combat because I was instakilled out of nowhere.

I have fast traveled into a nuke multiple times making me load the game multiple times and the load times on consoles are intolerable. I feel like nobody mentions how the shooting has improved while the ai has stayed the same or gotten worse.

Member

For the people who say that the combat is improved, do you honestly not mind the incredibly cheap and basic ai? Every time I try to play this game I get constantly sniped by grenade, missile and nuke spamming enemies, which would be okay if the game had better check pointing or auto saves, but as it stands on consoles I have to constantly quick save or else I'm stuck repeating 5 minutes of combat because I was instakilled out of nowhere.

I have fast traveled into a nuke multiple times making me load the game multiple times and the load times on consoles are intolerable. I feel like nobody mentions how the shooting has improved while the ai has stayed the same or gotten worse.

Member

The Witcher's world isn't as dark or serious as Game of Thrones or any of that and it doesn't want to be. There has always been some goofy shit in TW but it is leveled with the realism of the characters. The tone is consistent throughout the main quest and characters.

Fallout 4's is goofy and gamey but the story isn't. It takes itself serious throughout the entire thing. It's widely inconsistent because of that.

Sorry, you can't argue like that. I'm one of the few earth inhabitants who hasn't watched a single GoT epiode yet. I'm not a big Fantasy fan in general. My most favourite Fantasy movie (it's in my top 20 of all times) is Excalibur which is labeled High Fantasy. For me personally this movie is rather Dark Fantasy - it's the equivalent to the Souls games (I'm talking atmosphere and feel here). I love this movie because it is all about atmosphere and the King Arthur lore has a very philosophical undertone. Most other Fantasy stories put an emphasis on characters, their relationships and world-building to promote escapism.

98,78% of all Fantasy movies/novels/games with medieval setting have a dark tone. Why? Because the medieval period of the western world is often seen as the Dark Ages - this is a trope. You can't tell me now that W3 is not going for a dark tone. Everyone was praising it for that and this is what I liked about the first third of the game. Elves, funny dwarves, theatre stuff, the Catherine Heigl romance comedy stuff is what made the game's storytelling and my perception of W3's world inconsistent, plus the main quest feeling tedious and uninspired, because the Wild Hunt is a joke. This is totally subjective and no argument will change that, because words can't change subjective perception of things in the past,you know. In FO4 it was easier to play the game my way, playing my own story. Please note, that I haver never said that the story/the writing in FO4 is good.

Member

Not much, but it doesn't try to completely dismiss the entire thread and OP's opinion, like the posts that disagree do. That's the point. If you're gonna start banning people for not adding to the conversation, you'd end up banning everyone all the time.

Member

Saying you liked a game is a perfectly valid input into a discussion. You don't need to write an essay about why you exactly liked it. Maybe the guy is at work and had 60 secs to post his message. Why should he need to explain in detail? His post contributes to the counter-argument that ppl did enjoy the game, for anyone else reading. Having never played Fallout 4, this is valuable to me in my judgement of the popular opinion on this game and whether it should get my interest.

Have you seen the shit posted in other threads that is ignored? Actual trolling.

No, you're right, it isn't an post to judge interest in a game, but for people who haven't played a particular game a post like this OP that says it's a 'nuclear disappointment' will put them off, so ppl posting that they liked it is the counter argument that means, maybe, it's not that bad and you should think about playing it.

I can't see why this is difficult for you to understand. If half the first page is ppl just posting, 'you're wrong I loved Fallout 4' then that is very valuable in judging the validity of the original OP. Just the same as if everyone said, 'yeah, I totally agree. It's a massive disappointment'. If I read a full page of agreement I would think, 'Man that game must really suck. I'll avoid it.'

The people who have been banned, had valid contributions and had a right to voice them as members of this community.

Member

I think Bethesda has tried to make their RPG games more accessible to the average gamer in order to increase sales. In doing this though they're obviously going to upset some fans of their earlier works; it's inevitable.

That being said I'm kind of perplexed by all the banning of the people that said they enjoyed it. Are people not allowed to disagree with the OP's opinion?

Member

I've played 3 and New Vegas multiple times. General consensus is that Fallout 4 has superior weapon handling and responsiveness but I'm seeing this conflated with the game having better combat in general. I'm asking if people who prefer FO4 if they have actually considered if the change is meaningful when the AI is still noticeably behind every other triple A fps.

Most Fallout 4 defenders I have talked to say they don't mind that game isn't an RPG anymore because of the improved shooting but I'm telling you it's still garbage. Fallout is now a mediocre fps with terrible rpg elements.

Member

I've played 3 and New Vegas multiple times. General consensus is that Fallout 4 has superior weapon handling and responsiveness but I'm seeing this conflated with the game having better combat in general. I'm asking if people who prefer FO4 if they have actually considered if the change is meaningful when the AI is still noticeably behind every other triple A fps.

Most Fallout 4 defenders I have talked to say they don't mind that game isn't an RPG anymore because of the improved shooting but I'm telling you it's still garbage. Fallout is now a mediocre fps with terrible rpg elements.

Banned

I think Bethesda has tried to make their RPG games more accessible to the average gamer in order to increase sales. In doing this though they're obviously going to upset some fans of their earlier works; it's inevitable.

That being said I'm kind of perplexed by all the banning of the people that said they enjoyed it. Are people not allowed to disagree with the OP's opinion?

I think it's a matter of low content posting rather than the opinion voiced therein. If you're gonna disagree with OP then you should elaborate at least a little bit on why you feel this way.

Personally I agree with OP completely. The pace of the game is ruined by constantly having to micro manage your inventory and the shoddy UI only serves to compound the issue further. Also this has to be the worst written FO game by a significant margin. Literally the only two things I like better about FO4 compared to previous FO games are the shooting mechanics and the graphics, everything else took a huge step back IMO.

shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuup

For a long time, before I got into the meat of the main quest, I was disappointed too. The game is very similar to Fallout 3, and that's putting it mildly. I had nothing but flashbacks to that game, and it doesn't help that they even recycle the retro songs from 3. Exploring, combat, the overall feel... Like F3 all over again. Since I spent 60+ hours on that game, I expected a little more. The power armor is a good addition though, and I'm sure many others liked the inclusion of settlements (I didn't, because sim/building games are not my thing).

However, one aspect that's a definite improvement over F3 was the main storyline. I couldn't tell you anything that happened in F3's story, but I'll definitely remember F4's. Some may be put off by the 'twist', but I liked it. It got better for me

because I joined the Railroad and betrayed Father near the end. When I discovered their hideout, I knew I wanted to be on their team. The infiltration subplot made it worthwile.

Another difference is that Fallout 4's Wasteland feels more diverse and fun to explore than 3's. That

nuclear sea in the southwest felt like a radioactive Mordor

and there are cool locations like this. I didn't explore the entire map, but what there are definitely surprises here and there.

So if you've played F3 already, it's hard to recommend this one, because it really does borrow a lot, and it's a very déjà vu experience. I guess the improved main quest makes it worth playing. But if you've never played F3, I would definitely recommend Fallout 4 over it. It has all the elements that made F3 great, a better storyline and more diverse map.

Member

I didn't really have issue with most of the game. It was decent (modern era) Fallout experience. Not as good as what Obsidian did, around the same level Bethesda did previously. The lack of explaining with the settlements was a bit annoying, why am I doing any of this? Well then I didn't and it had no effect on the game. Nice feature that was almost never used in the actual game. I also like the change to power armors. I never used power armor after the initial introduction but I think it was a good twist on a previous concept.

What completely ruined the game for me was when the, well, endgame begun. That whole sequence of

"choose one and that's all you can do, now follow the script and do a bit of mass murdering" without any choice after the initial faction decision. I made friends with every faction over the game and now the developers think the proper thing to do is just make me murder everyone from two factions.

That's when the game went from GOTY contender to probably most disappointing game of the year. You have to put effort into your endgame/ending in a big RPG like this. I wonder if it was just about development time, that they didn't have enough time to develop proper endgame - or can the possibly think that what they did was good effort? Either way, it's up there with Mass Effect 3 ending for me.

Member

I've played 3 and New Vegas multiple times. General consensus is that Fallout 4 has superior weapon handling and responsiveness but I'm seeing this conflated with the game having better combat in general. I'm asking if people who prefer FO4 if they have actually considered if the change is meaningful when the AI is still noticeably behind every other triple A fps.

Most Fallout 4 defenders I have talked to say they don't mind that game isn't an RPG anymore because of the improved shooting but I'm telling you it's still garbage. Fallout is now a mediocre fps with terrible rpg elements.

The shooting feels far far better obviously. But the changes to the way ghouls attack (much more increased velocity and verocity), mole rats popping in and out of the ground increases their potency, variations of the insects means they don't all just fly in straight lines towards you (some jink and dodge), deathclaws have an increased moveset, radscorpions more effectively pop in and out of the ground in order to ambush you, raiders are better at getting behind cover. The addition of more enemy types within types has increased the variety, and legendary enemies has been a welcome addition also.

Is that enough defence of the improved combat? I mean I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but the combat is better (for me) than Witcher 3, as are the approaches to combat more varied

Banned

I was really disappointed in it too. I've loved all of Bethesda's game since Morrowind, but this one just hasn't clicked with me the way those did. I put 30 hours in and there are moments of greatness, but most of the time I was waiting for it to grab me. Ended up setting it aside for FFVII PS4 and, once I beat that game, just couldn't find the energy to go back to it.

Member

It's the first time I've played a fallout game, and I like it, it's fun. But I can see why series fans, or just people in general think it's crap

I am seriously bothered by the tone of the game though. The main story wants to be taken seriously but at the same time is like a bunch of tongue and cheek jabs about how the world is literally a giant pile of garbage. Like when you first start and everyone talks up Diamond City as this amazing town, largest most interesting place in the land and the shining light of the new world !, but you get there and it's literally a pile of garbage in side of a rotting Fenway park. I feel like the game just Bambards you with this type of humor, if that's what it is, but then at the same time wants elements to be taken seriously. It's weird

I wouldn't say so. The enemies have all been given an increase in speed, but that's because the player would be over powered without it. Otherwise every enemy that uses melee bum rushes the player, regardless of player build or level. Enemies with ranged attacks will use cover occasionally but an enemy encounter where there are no glitches with the cover system are very rare. Enemy's who have a grenade in their inventory will always throw as soon as the player is in range. The game engine simply doesn't have the option for npcs to use multiple strategies or account for player behavior. Enemies equipped with explosive weapons will even commit suicide aiming at the player through walls.

As for your comment on Witcher 3's combat. Witcher 3 has much more variation because the game supports more diverse builds and enemy types as well as a robust dodge system. I'm assuming you didn't play much of the game or played on a low difficulty, but that's off topic anyway.

im guessing they caught a ban for being dismissive of the thread. Liking FO4 is not banworthy because plenty of others havent been banned but they have explained what they liked about it. Think about if someone made a LTTP FO4 thread praising the game and people gave a post saying "Well i hated it."

Member

After 30 hours in I think I'll just put it down. The only fallout game I have finished after Fallout 2 was NV.
Both 3 and 4 were disappointments. And I really love RPGs.
Besides combat, I just can't think of anything in fallout 4 that is better than the witcher 3. The lack of details as mentioned by OP and the disappointing story are the major flaws. And those companions, they are even less memorable than some NPCs in TW3.

The perks are disappointing, it's part because the game is a open FPS/ARPG more than a RPG. You have:
1. Perks that are are damage increases, which are effective but boring.
2. Useful skill-perks like lockpick, computers, and stealth if you want a stealth build.
3. Crafting perks.
4. Perks that are silly because they are just quality-of-life stuff for the player, like increased carry capacity or shared storage between settlements. They don't make the player better, they just decrease the number of loading screens the player has to endure. So they should have included that functionality by default!
5. Wasteful perks like barter (you already will have too much money) or extra loot found (you will have too much loot, again) or the settlement related perks, which are wasteful if you don't like the settlements.

[*]Dialog options are: be a dick, be a sarcastic prick, be a decent person. And half the time they don't change the outcome of the conversation at all.

Half the time? Heh you are being generous here! I think it doesn't matter most of the time, at least 85-90% of them, they just give a different one sentence answer and then continue the same script, independent of what you chose.

[*]Crafting system causes you to horde everything you find. Which may not sound like a bad thing, but when paired with a terrible sorting UI and 500 different items that contain various different materials. Good luck finding a material that breaks down into the raw material you need. If I subtracted the amount of time I spent picking shit up, I'd honestly have about 5 hours less play time.

5 hours? You again are being generous. It's more like 20 hours. The game is 10% crafting and trading, 40% killing stuff, 40% looting stuff, 10% talking and questing (I mean, the parts of questing isn't killing stuff and looting stuff).

Member

Crafting system causes you to horde everything you find. Which may not sound like a bad thing, but when paired with a terrible sorting UI and 500 different items that contain various different materials. Good luck finding a material that breaks down into the raw material you need. If I subtracted the amount of time I spent picking shit up, I'd honestly have about 5 hours less play time.

About that, you can mark the material you need at a workbench and when you see an item in the game with that material in it it will be highlighted.
Either with a mark next to it's name or glowing if you get the perk for that.

Member

For the people who say that the combat is improved, do you honestly not mind the incredibly cheap and basic ai? Every time I try to play this game I get constantly sniped by grenade, missile and nuke spamming enemies, which would be okay if the game had better check pointing or auto saves, but as it stands on consoles I have to constantly quick save or else I'm stuck repeating 5 minutes of combat because I was instakilled out of nowhere.

I have fast traveled into a nuke multiple times making me load the game multiple times and the load times on consoles are intolerable. I feel like nobody mentions how the shooting has improved while the ai has stayed the same or gotten worse.

I agree. I think I preferred NV's combat because of how the enemies had some verismilitude. You had hard areas and easy areas and it was obvious how tough most of the enemies were.

In F4, I see identical looking enemies in the same area that will take either 1 headshot or 30 headshots, while either doing about 2% damage per hit to me, or about 30%. There will be level 5 enemies hanging out across the street from level 30 ones. I can take no damage from some low level guy with a combat rifle, but a high level guy kills me in 3 or 4 shots from an automatic pipe pistol?
Combat is basically hitting F5 all the time and crossing your fingers that you don't get cheaply killed.

I hate the new power armour mechanic because it's a good idea (make power armour be very different to standard armour) but simply doesn't provide any fun gameplay.
You can either get 1-shot by enemies with perfectly aimed grenades, or you can equip god mode armour and just waste everything. The fusion core mechanic discourages exploration, which is arguably the main source of fun in the game!
If I could be bothered, I'l clear every area in the power armour, then get out of the suit to explore, but really who can be bothered?
My decision to use power armour is a question of "Can I be bothered with the load times of getting and returning the suit?", which is a horrible meta-game decsion.

F3's combat was bad, unless you almost excluisively used VATS. I think they wanted F3 wanted to be more like 'dice rolling' for the FPS combat, whereas NV and F4 allow you to play mostly as a standard FPS. The FPS combat in F4 and NV is still awful compared to any 'true' FPS. The randomness causes you to miss a lot unless you keep perfectly still and a huge number of my headshots clip into some invisible wall.
The bullet collision detection is terrible for a game with limited ammo that prioritises body-part targeting. Figuring out the hit boxes for cover is totally unintuitive.

I'm maybe 30% of my way through the game and I'm already feeling burnt out. Normally that's the time of my peak enjoyment for Bethesda games.

It's sad that my most fun moment in the last gaming session wasn't liberating the castle or fighting a mirelurk queen, but instead stumbling across a deathclaw fighting with the BOS after forgetting that I had installed the Macho Man Randy Savage mod (Ooooh Yeeeeah!)

Member

I wouldn't say so. The enemies have all been given an increase in speed, but that's because the player would be over powered without it. Otherwise every enemy that uses melee bum rushes the player, regardless of player build or level. Enemies with ranged attacks will use cover occasionally but an enemy encounter where there are no glitches with the cover system are very rare. Enemy's who have a grenade in their inventory will always throw as soon as the player is in range. The game engine simply doesn't have the option for npcs to use multiple strategies or account for player behavior. Enemies equipped with explosive weapons will even commit suicide aiming at the player through walls.

As for your comment on Witcher 3's combat. Witcher 3 has much more variation because the game supports more diverse builds and enemy types as well as a robust dodge system. I'm assuming you didn't play much of the game or played on a low difficulty, but that's off topic anyway.

You quite quickly handwave my criticism of Witcher 3, but I can play Fallout 4 without ever using melee, unarmed, rifles, energy weapons, heavy weapons, explosives. I can also mix all those up in whatever way I want. I can sneak through the entire game or go in guns blazing wearing power armour. So respectively we are gonna have to agree to disagree on player build variety comparing Fallout to Witcher. The disappointing aspect for me was the lack of variety in player build in Fallout with regards to story and character type outside of combat, in combat I think the game provides a great deal of choices.

I honestly haven't seen any enemies committing suicide with explosives in my playthroughs and I honestly don't understand glitches with cover as you describe. In terms of improvement over 3 or New Vegas there are marked improvements, I'm not saying the game has exceptional AI, I'm just saying it's obvious that it is much better

I think the game is great. I think it it a huge generational leap over previous titles, in every way.

Yes the animations aren't perfect, and there is some jank still. But I go in expecting that. For what we get its worth it.

I like the dialogue options because with voiced games I don't want to read my choice to myself, then have my player character read it verbatim.

I think the companions are great, add humor, and add help make the world feel alive.

I think the art design is absolutely brilliant.

I think the gunplay is fantastic for an RPG. And pretty good even if it were just a SP shooter.

Love the feeling of progression.

I think the crafting and settlements system is an awesome addition. Not perfect, but it's a hell of a great new feature for the franchise, and one that many people are having a great time pouring hours into.

The one problem I do have with the fallout games, is the problem I have had with Fallout as a franchise forever. And it's the whole "You have lived here for your entire life, and so did your father and his father before him, but you still haven't patched up your house or cleared out the skeleton in the living room" thing.

Anyway. Silly I had to explain myself. Posting from my work via my phone. I enjoyed the game. Regardless of my avatar.

Banned

I haven't touched it after I beat the story. It was just Fallout 3 with some new features. As a consequence it doesn't stimulate my curiosity enough to explore like I did in Fallout 3. I never really found that much while exploring either way. You nailed all the points though, OP. I just don't think it did anything to evolve the franchise. The stuff it adds fits in with the universe and are good ideas, but it's always bogged down by something. For example, the player voice acting was amazing, but was ultimately hampered by bad lip syncing and poor facial animations. The town building mechanic was really addicting initially, but it didn't feel fully realized and finished (at all). It sorely lacked a variety of items for building your town and it just feels pointless in the end.

I just get the feeling something went wrong during development. Hopefully since Bethesda expanded their studio they can sort out any issues they were having with this game. It wasn't horrible or anything and it was definitely worth the playthrough. It just doesn't do enough to feel like it's the successor to Fallout 3. Bethesda is always pushing the boundaries with their games so Fallout 4 stands out.

Member

I enjoyed Fallout4 while it lasted (350ish hours to complete most of the stuff the game has to offer.), but yea the later it deeps into the main plot, it gets worse and doesn't make much sense at all. Well, the writing is just pure bad. I guess Bethesda didn't expect much people to finish the campaign to care about post campaign common sense issues that the game is plagued with.

Also bugs. A lot of them. I can by pass most of them with the help of the debug console as I played on PC, but I feel sorry for console players that they may get stuck after hundreds of hours with no solution. Tho it's not a Bethesda game if it doesn't have game breaking bugs at this point.

Member

It's a huge pile of shit by a developer which I now consider one of the most amateurish developers under the sun in relation to manpower and budget.

I can't believe how many positive reviews and great scores it received. I guess this definitely makes me a moneyhatting believer, though. Can't believe how much I was looking forward to this game. You can find posts I made defending this game until the very day it came out, even its graphics, all the time. I was that guy.

What exactly were they thinking when they replaced the old conversation system with a generic conversation wheel? In the past I even defended this. I argued it's better for a video game this way because you don't have to read so much and gameplay is more important than story. But when I said this, I was just playing Witcher 3 and it has visually simplified answer choices, too, and it does a great job with those most the time. When I said this, I was considering how much more expierenced Bethesda is than CDPR, how they have way more resources and how much I actually liked their Fallout 3. Boy was I blind. It's like their target audience was the same people that bought a Wii for Wii Sports and Mario Kart. It's completely generic, for some reason they never wanted to exceed like four words, even when this leads to absolutely vague shit. Sometimes it even seems like, whoever was responsible for this shit, couldn't put what your character actually says into four words and just called it a day. For example (SPOILER): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7_91zhfxuA See 14:00. Maxson is giving you a speech, yelling at you, actually making a good point. It's probably one of the most substantial points of the game. Then the conversation wheel pops up and it gives you "Seriously?" What the fuck do they mean by "Seriously?" What the hell were they thinking? And the funniest thing is this is actually the best answer you can pick because it seems to be the most moderate one.

Also:

The bigger issue, however, is that they completely butchered the RPG mechanics inside the conversation system itself. Maybe I'm just dumb and didn't see it, maybe my version is broken or something, but I could swear your characteristics and perks don't affect the answers you can give anymore. In Fallout New Vegas, for example, there were many answers you could only give when your character is clever enough or when you have unlocked a specific perk like "Science", I believe. Those answers were always fun and it made the conversation system actually more interactive and motivating. If I'm not totally idotic or own a broken copy and they really scrapped this, I have no idea how everyone can be accepting of this. This is a huge flaw, a huge step backwards.

Anyway, I could actually still live with this. Even more important; what the hell was this terrible attempt of a story? They really recycle this terrible humanoid robot theme? I don't even know where to start, I think I hated everything about it, from beginning to end. First, why would you even make the protagonist of a Fallout game a parant looking for a missing son that was just taken by someone who killed his mother/father? The Fallout universe is a grotesque, serious but at the same time humoristic one, especially in this game with the character talking and making faces. I just saw how my wife got shot, I'm missing my son who could get killed or be already dead and after 20 minutes I left the vault, I'm already laughing, cracking jokes, listening to funny music, building fucking chairs for lazy people and doing weird Fallout quests, wearing detective clothes and mimicking a cartoon character.

A talking character with a backstory isn't generally a bad idea for an RPG but they did an absolutely oustanding job with this story making you believe it is. Again, this was actually one of the things I defended months ago. And again I took Witcher 3 and Geralt who is one of the most reasonable and charismatic characters out there as granted. I had no idea Bethesda could fuck up like this.

But of course the crucial point of the story is the whole Institute thing and all the quests around it. One quest that comes to mind is the Covenant quest. It finally lets you choose between either letting some scientist experiment on and finally "kill" a synth in order to find out a way to identify synths and distinguish between synths and people or kill the human and save the synth, a robot. The writers really want you to sympathize with a robot, basically a toaster (yes, synths behave unrealistically human because it's a silly game but they're just robots), in a way that you would kill a human with good intentions. This is how stupid the story is. There are similar quests with ghouls instead of robots and they make sense, Ghouls look nasty and many of them try to eat you out there but not all of them are bad and they're actually living people. This quest was the point I realized this story is going nowhere. It's a shame. I liked Shaun and the Institute as a location but nothing about them made any sense. I was tempted to join them but after unsuccessfully talking to every single NPC multiple times hoping to get some answers, I joined the Brotherhood and blew the whole thing up. To this day I have no idea why they're risking a war with the Brotherhood and basically every small association on the surface and spending all those resources and energy on building generation 3 synths. "Hey, we have working health care, food, economy and protection. Oh yeah, we're also making copies of humans." Just why? After realizing the game is a steaming pile of shit in almost every way, I made a lot condtional on this one answer, maybe hoping for a redeeming factor. But I never got it. I think once I could actually ask an NPC inside the Institute, all he replied was basically "Haha, are you joking? Just think about all the possibilities. Haha." Hell, most NPCs there don't even seem to be all too fond of the synths themselves. And of course they are a threat in every way, shape and form. They are a threat for everyone.

To get on to the most important subjects, core gameplay, level design and performance/polishing/playability, from annoying, little flaws to "what the fuck were they thinking?": The Pip-Boy menu is still bad and you can't even sort your items by date which you could actually do in New Vegas. This isn't as much of a step backwards as the butchered dialogue system I mentioned earlier but it's defnitely a step backwards, and a weird one. Then, instead of fleshing it out and making the Fallout combat somewhat more tactical which is long overdue, they just scrapped the New Vegas mechanic with the different types of bullets.

Something more or less optional that lets the player put his personal mark on something and is a) not very demanding to implement and b) not totally out of place is generally a great thing, there was no need for taking this choice away from the player on top of castrating the old, more complex conversation system with characteristics actually affecting your answers.

Why I think the combat needs to be improved? Because it is fucking terrible. Even though I considered myself a Fallout fan until Fallout 4, I always hated it and wondered who in his right mind would design shit like this and then be like "Yeah, that's great guys, send it out." If you play on anything but easy, enemies in dungeons become damage sponges and either you try to stealth your way through which (could be wrong here) is often impossible or you'll eventually end up putting the cursor on an enemy and holding the left mouse button while walking backwards, spamming heal items and walking around obstacles hoping the terrible AI is too dumb to deal with them. This is the Fallout combat. If you play competitive shooters like Counter Strike, I think it's even worse for you. They clearly tried to make it play more like an shooter but failed miserably. It still plays like shit. Horrible mouse acceleration, you stutter, enemies stutter, everything stutters, the animations are terrible and way too unrealistic and unpredictable with the enemies clipping through everything, crouching, getting up, crouching again at the speed of light and invisible walls blocking your projectiles. Well, you can just spam jet all the time which makes the game hilariously easy but at the same time, well, slow, slow and bad for your ears. Doesn't help you are forced to play on higher difficulties to not miss out on rare weapons (which idea I actually love if it wasn't for the horrible gameplay) and you can make more jet than you could ever use up. I love the idea with playing on higher difficulties actually rewarding you but I feel like the gameplay is way too shit for this to work. I also don't like how you actually drown in legendary weapons and how they render all normal weapons compeltely useless. This makes a lot of hidden weapons and chests pointless.

Now what were they thinking with this whole Sims bullshit? Instead of wasting time on this, they should have spent more time actually writing a good story and making some decent sidequests and locations. I understand letting the player organize his own room and put his own mark on something, many RPGs have this, it's great. But the Sims mechanics in Fallout 4 are foced on you, whether you enjoy it or not (and no one buys Fallout for this stuff), it was unpolished and extremely glitchy. It was probably the element of this game that made me waste the most time on watching loading screens while questioning my whole life and my stupid hobby. I gave it a chance, mostly because I read you can get unique weapons, armors and other stuff this way. I focused on Sanctuary Hills, After like 100 hours I've played this game, I did not get anything out of it, all the NPCs are just there for, well, that's why, to be there. And it's your job to keep them safe, protect them and every 20 hours kill a few super mutants that are attacking the settlement. Why? So they can proceed being there, of course. You build those generic Fallout objects and then they're there, too. Then you have pointless NPCs and pointless, generic Fallout objects just being there. Isn't that great? You can't interact with anything, you can't play pool after having built a pool table and putting some balls and cues on top of it. You can't sit there and eat with them in your lawn chairs with them actually saying something funny or interesting, they don't leave behind any trash that you have to clean, you don't have to walk your dog or make some NPC do it, you can't adopt more and other animals. You can't even really make an awesome looking village or something like that, that's not possible at all. I also never got that unique weapon I read about. To get those weapons, I wasted like six perks so I can build all this stuff and those shops on top of having invested all of my caps. After 100 hours I have never seen that guy who is supposed to sell them. Why would they even do something this stupid and cryptical? Those shops are as useless as those whole Sims mechanics in general. It's an incredibly frustrating part of the game with no way around if you're a "completionist". The worst thing is how glitchy it is. The informations you get through your Pip-Boy don't go hand in hand with the informations you actually get through your building menu. Sometimes the Pip-Boy says a settlement lacks protection, you go there, endure the long loading time and the settlement building menu tells you everything is fine (i.e. no red icons) with NPCs not complaining about anything. Then you check out your Pip-Boy and suddenly another settlement lacks something. I have no idea how much time I wasted on this shit but I think I've never seen something this fucking terrible in a video game made by a developer this big. What I hate the most about the settlements is how Bethesda used them to fill this terrible, boring mess of an open world, making them a repeating point like all the terrible factories, churches or monster nests in Witcher 3. If it would be only a few settlements, it would be actually something special. This way it's just a geneirc, predictable event of an amateurish open world, Ubisoft tier.

The settlements feel like remains of a scrapped online mode/MMORPG with players being able to invade or help each other.

At this point I was actually happy how glitchy it is. I had no idea how to build and arrange this thing properly. I can't really remember anymore what my problem was but this thing just didn't fit inside that huge thing because the feet (concrete) were in its way. Then I just removed the wooden floor and it suddenly worked with the huge thing floating in the air.

Glitches over glitches and more glitches. Without autosaving and being able to save whenever you want and making multiple files? Yes, it would not be possible to finish this game. It's a game in its pre-alpha state with an autosaving system slapped on it sold for 50 bucks. Soon months have passed and basically nothing has changed.

A very harmless glitch. Enemies just sinking into the ground. It can be very frustrating when it's a legendary enemy and you can't reach the loot, though. With a product this glitchy, it's weird how no one at Bethesda came up with the idea of making the loot appear automatically after having killed an enemy (see Xenoblade, for example) or just let a loot bag appear approximately where the enemy died (Witcher). Although the Xenoblade method is probably less advisable considering this game is all about shooting raiders and crabs, a window popping up every 10 seconds could be annoying.

What actually shocked me, however, was how glitchy and unpolished the power armor mechanics were. This was one of the main selling points of the game and it felt like the idea with making it basically a mech came to them like six months before the game was released due to the general mech hype. You're too big for many rooms with your head going through the ceiling which makes you see the skybox, it's too broken, you often can't operate computers because there is a fucking chair in your way you for some reason must sit on before operating the computer. Which leads us to the terrible enter and exit animation that is way, way too long. Why would they waste our time like this? You'll hop in and out many, many times in this game and every single time you have to endure this terribly long animation. Just why? Were they so proud of themselves they actually managed to animate human looking movements with this archaic engine? There even is a faster animation in the game. Luckily there is a mod for this by now. There are so many terrible things in this game that you have to play it with mods to make it bearable. How horrible is this developer?

This is me trying to have fun with the jetpack mechanic. No, that actually was the moment before, this picture shows me being stuck and having to reload my save again.

And again. No, you can't just exit the armor wherever you want to prevent this bullshit, that's Xenoblade X.

This one is actually funny or maybe creepy. Some elevators let you open that little hatch, I often thought "what's the point". This time I could even see there is a corpse up there and I had a jetpack equipped. Well.

Now in this case I was actually lucky I was inside my power armor. No idea what this glitch is, just used this eleveator and when I was at the top, this happened. Without the power armor (no fall damage), I'd have to reload my save again.

Unrelated but whatever. Killed this Railroad guy but the quest marker ain't going nowhere. I'll never be able to finish this quest without using the console or mods. This game is a disaster for completionists.

How can someone release something like this? How can something like this receive such positive feedback?

The quest design is terrible. The generic Skyrim tavern quests are everywhere and you often couldn't even know when a quest is just a generic fetch quest with you killing a bunch of raiders, then heading back to the quest giver, getting some experience and useless money. At one point in the game I think I noticed that all quests that didn't have a unique Pip-Boy animation were generic and should be ignored. Too late, though. And even the optional quests with the unique Pip-Boys were usually terrible, always about shooting raiders, crabs with pointless reward or a boring story. The biggest disappointment was probably that Museum of Witchcraft every NPC in the game is talking about, saying it's totally spooky. It's one fucking generic enemy and a stupid, pointless decision you can make. Talking of raiders; what the hell were they thinking making this an unofficial Rambo game? Those guys are fucking everywhere, either raiders, crabs, robots or ghouls. Except for the centerpiece, the world is just one generic, flat pile of shit filled with you running from generic factory to generic factory. Sometimes there is a generic churche that looks like every other churche. And of course the generic settlements. I'm not saying there aren't some actually decent locations in this game. I liked Covenant (despite the terrible synth story), Good Neighboor (probably where the game peaks) and of course Diamond City but the world is infested with generic, boring copy/pasted content which burns you out 10 hours after you left Sanctuary Hills. It's completely missing the unique Fallout atmosphere. Where are all those people coming from anyway? Wasn't there something about nukes and a post-apocalyptic setting? There are people everywhere and the lollipop color palette isn't really helping. There are almost 40 fucking factories in this game and they're all more or less the same to me with the same assets. 40. Packed with armies of people you have to mow down. Remember New Vegas which you can finish without killing anyone? Quests that even let you be cool with the raiders? It also didn't have countless factories and enemies everywhere and the few locations and NPCs it had actually felt special. Even that one cabin with the old guy and the tame mole rat you can talk to. The world had the necessary emptiness the Fallout franchise and this setting needs. Atmosphere and immersion is extremely important for Fallout, New Vegas respected this. I loved Good Springs, the contaminated village with a unique kind of ghouls, that village with the dinosaur statue, Jacob's Town, the settlements, and of course New Vegas. Not to mention that it actually had good dungeons and vaults, probably the best abandoned vault in the series. And you can find posts of me shitting on New Vegas right here on NeoGAF.

There are a million other things you could criticize. Many small things. Like how illogical this quest with the boy in the fridge is, how annoying it is that you can move around freely when talking to NPCs and accidentally shoot them when you don't know for sure if there'll be an actual conversation with text you can skip (same button as shoot button), how bad the economy system is, how dumb charisma is in this game with not even giving you hard numbers for your chances. Not to mention you can just reload your save anyway. If we fuck up despiet having hard numbers, it's only our own fault and we can accept this and keep playing. The way it is, I'm sure, everyone reloaded his save at some point.

It really didn't help the game that I played Witcher 3 before and that I'm now playing Xenoblade which lets me enter and exit my mech within one second, a game that basically has no glitches despite having a world that is way, way bigger, way more varied with actual verticalness (while mountains don't exist and there is fucking nothing on all those buildings in Fallout 4), less generic and repeating content and no loading times at all.

Oh, the loading times. How could I forget the loading times? I had to buy an SSD for this game because it was unplayable with my HDD while every other game is perfectly playable with it. Some loading times lasted two minutes and there are loading times for entering a small room with nothing but a table, a chair and maybe some empty bottles. This alone already makes the game a pile of shit, doesn't even matter how good or bad the actual game design is.

I dedicate the final word to Trace who has 19 FPS looking at some nasty PS2 shit with a GTX 980 Ti: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=185410478&postcount=3197 I have an R9 290, it was sometimes unplayable for me while I usually have like 45-60 FPS with a low/high settings mix. How can you design a game that performes this irregulary without realizing this is not OK?